President Barack Obama made clear Thursday in a closed-door session with Senate Democrats that he’s prepared to veto hostile legislation from the GOP-controlled Congress, including an Iran sanctions package on the front-burner of Capitol Hill.

According to several sources at the Thursday summit in Baltimore, Obama vowed to defend his agenda against Republicans in Congress, promised to stand firm against GOP efforts to dismantle his agenda and called on his Democratic colleagues to help sustain his expected vetoes. The president also was explicit over his administration’s opposition to an Iran sanctions bill, promising to veto legislation with his administration in the midst of multilateral nuclear negotiations with the Middle Eastern regime.

Even though Obama’s position on Iran sanctions differs from a number of powerful Democrats, the session, several sources said, was more of a pep rally than confrontation. Despite his lame-duck status, the president promised that he would not sit on the sidelines in the next two years. He vowed more executive actions to implement his agenda, something bound to prompt anger from Republicans who have called the president’s unilateral moves, particularly on immigration, an unconstitutional power grab.

“I’m not going to spend the next two years on defense; I’m going to play offense,” Obama said, according to two attendees.

The president’s remarks at their retreat at the Hilton hotel near Camden Yards Stadium, were greeted warmly, sources said. The energetic atmosphere was a sharp departure from the tension felt between Senate Democrats and the White House in the aftermath of November’s GOP midterm election rout, attendees said. Obama spent most of the time answering questions, even promoting his trade agenda to many Democrats who oppose his administration’s push on the issue.

At the meeting, Obama, who has rarely used his veto pen in his six years in office, signaled he would do so repeatedly, including on GOP-sponsored legislation to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Once that measure passes, Republicans have indicated they would soon move to a bill — being drafted by Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) — that would provide a set of tough sanctions against the Iranian economy. The White House worries such a provocative move could prompt Iran to back out of a sweeping nuclear deal with the U.S. and other world powers before a June 30 deadline.

White House officials confirmed the veto threat over the Iran bill but declined to comment further. His administration has raised concerns over the Iran measure, but the president appeared to take his opposition a step further in Thursday’s meeting. In January 2014, Obama threatened a veto over a similar Iran sanctions bill, but in the new Congress, the administration has stopped just short of such a threat.

“We in the administration believe that, at this time, increasing sanctions would dramatically undermine our efforts to reach this shared goal” of reducing Iran’s nuclear weapon capacity, said Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, at a Louisville event with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) earlier this week.

The bill, however, likely has the votes to clear both chambers of Congress.

As to the other argument, employees have been giving the employers unpaid work hours for decades. These days we hear about underemployed employees but forget that that trend is relatively new and works to the benefit of the employer. Also, most workers don't fall into that category. They are forced to bust their butt. Anyone who has worked a white collar job knows that 40 hour week is mostly a 40 hour plus week. Likewise, since the 70's, it is hard to argue that the employees are getting an equitable share of the productivity pie.

The average 'employee' has been taking it in the ass for decades. I could go on but I need a coffee.

The Occupy movement has the right idea but they lack focus and leadership.

Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization has allocated 3.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of Basra crude to be shipped out in February, up from 2.7 million bpd in January, they said, citing a preliminary loading program.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the total number of new business startups and business closures per year — the birth and death rates of American companies — have crossed for the first time since the measurement began. I am referring to employer businesses, those with one or more employees, the real engines of economic growth. Four hundred thousand new businesses are being born annually nationwide, while 470,000 per year are dying.

Business startups outpaced business failures by about 100,000 per year until 2008. But in the past six years, that number suddenly reversed, and the net number of U.S. startups versus closures is minus 70,000. Net Number of New US Firms Plummethttp://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/GMJ/ciavniuad06fxohwao4d3a.jpg

My hunch is that no one talks about the birth and death rates of American business because Wall Street and the White House, no matter which party occupies the latter, are two gigantic institutions of persuasion. The White House needs to keep you in the game because their political party needs your vote. Wall Street needs the stock market to boom, even if that boom is fueled by illusion. So both tell us, “The economy is coming back.”

Let’s get one thing clear: This economy is never truly coming back unless we reverse the birth and death trends of American businesses.

Dead-Wrong Thinking

It is catastrophic to be dead wrong on the biggest issue of the last 50 years — the issue of where jobs come from. Our leadership keeps thinking that the answer to economic growth and ultimately job creation is more innovation, and we continue to invest billions in it. But an innovation is worthless until an entrepreneur creates a business model for it and turns that innovative idea in something customers will buy. Yet current thinking tells us we’re on the right track and don’t need different strategies, so we continue marching down the path of national decline, believing innovation will save us.

This is why the most devastating crash, imaginable, is a Real Estate Crash. New businesses originate with a home loan. That has been, largely, out of the question for the last six years. It's a miracle that there have been as many start-ups as there has been.

What in the world are you talking about, Legionnaire.Equitable interest in an ownership position. Labor does not an equitable interest make.

Labor works for wages, not shares.Owners and partners have equitable shares.

Once again, rat, you prove your unfamiliarity with the nuances of the English language. Whether it is understanding idiom, grammar, the importance of context, whatever, you come up short. Today it is basic word definition. I talk social science and you talk accounting. I talk equity and you talk rights. Dealing with you is a wasted effort.

No, I don't have it backwards. You are talking bookkeeping categories while I was talking about social science. Look up the definition of equitable or equity then reread the sentence I used it in.

I didn't say the worker has a legal 'right' to share in productivity gains. What I implied was that they should equitably share in productivity gains but don't. If that distinction is beyond you, there is no point arguing this any further.

Investing in innovation, the Capitalist deserves the productivity gains garnered.Not the Labor that operated the capital goods required for production.

The objection is to your claim that Labor had an 'Equitable Interest' in the enterprise, deserving a right to claim a portion of the productivity gains derived from capital investments. The differences exemplified, illustrated as it were, in the differences between Walmart and WinCo Foods

The International Criminal Court has launched an inquiry into possible war crimes in the Palestinian territories, opening a path to possible charges against Israelis or Palestinians.

In a statement on Friday, prosecutors said they would examine “in full independence and impartiality” crimes that may have occurred since June 13 last year. This allows the court to delve into the war between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza in July-August 2014 during which more than 2,100 Palestinians and 73 Israelis were killed.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement on Friday condemning the International Criminal Court for its decision to launch an initial inquiry into war crimes allegedly committed by Israel during its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip this past summer.

“It is absolutely scandalous that just days after terrorists butchered Jews in France, the general prosecutors is beginning an inquiry against the state of the Jews, and this only because we defend our citizens from Hamas, a terrorist organization that is allied with the Palestinian Authority.”

“Hamas war criminals fired thousands of rockets at Israeli citizens,” the prime minister said. “Unfortunately, [this probe] renders [the ICC] part of the problem, and not part of the solution.”

A Burmese woman was publicly beheaded on the street in the Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city in Islam. The footage of the brutal execution subsequently leaked onto YouTube, prompting a heated debate about the punishment's cruelty.MOSCOW, January 16 (Sputnik), Ekaterina Blinova — A Burmese woman was publicly beheaded in the Saudi city of Mecca on Monday, January 12, triggering a heated debate regarding the cruelty of the punishment.

Footage of the execution was obtained by the Middle East Eye (MEE), an independent news agency. It showed the decapitation of the Burmese woman in detail, according to the media outlet. On the verge of death, Laila Bint Abdul Muttalib Basim insisted that she was not guilty of killing the child. An executioner proceeded to slash her neck with a sword, making her scream loudly with pain. It took almost three blows to sever her head from her body.

The objection is to your claim that Labor had an ‘Equitable Interest’ in the enterprise, deserving a right to claim a portion of the productivity gains derived from capital investments.

I’m sorry you have a problem with that, rat. But just to be clear, what I am talking about is a right in equity not in law (unless perhaps there was something written into a union contract).

What I said was the following,

... since the 70’s, it is hard to argue that the employees are getting an equitable share of the productivity pie.

The statement is my opinion that on average the worker does not equitably share in the the benefits that derive from productivity growth or to be more exact in the economic benefits. It represents a social justice argument, a value judgment if you like, that argues for the worker getting a bigger share of the productivity pie. You indulge in the same type of value argument when you say,

Investing in innovation, the Capitalist deserves the productivity gains garnered.

I believe our difference of opinion probably stems from what I consider is your simplistic idea of what constitutes productivity as encapsulated in your statement,

You make no case for Labor to have any claim to those ‘productivity gains’.Gains that came from ‘investment’ in plant and equipment.Not from Labor working ‘harder or smarter’.

If, in fact, you think that productivity is merely a function of capital investment you are just plain wrong. That thought seems to draw on the old manufacturing model of productivity that never really applied to the majority of the US economy. You imply labor ‘working harder and smarter’ doesn’t contribute to productivity growth but of course that is absurd. It ignores the fact that there has been productivity improvements over the past few years from a lot of companies ‘doing more with less’, i.e. the recession effect, laying off people when demand drops but failing to rehire when demand returns.

Also, there is the concept of TFP (total function productivity) that involves progress and innovation in production technologies and processes but also other factors such as improvements in transportation, in health care, in energy generation, environmental gains, packaging materials, chemicals, improvements in education, IT, telecommunications, trade, etc. that are not necessarily sector or individual business specific. As I recall, CBO estimates these factors are responsible for a third to a half of overall productivity gains.

You say the 'capitalist' ‘deserves’ to pocket all the productivity gains for investing in plant and equipment but that the employee doesn't deserve to share for working 'smarter and harder'. I disagree.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.